A wide variety of computer operating systems and computer application programs incorporate, display and/or perform operations on data or information that is hierarchical in nature. For example, most computer operating systems provide users access to a hierarchy of directories and sub-directories where documents, programs and/or other information are stored. Many computer e-mail systems likewise provide a hierarchy of folders and/or sub-folders in which e-mail messages may be stored. Organizer applications typically allow a user to establish task listings and/or store other forms of data which, once again, may be hierarchical in nature. Business Intelligence (“BI”) systems display overall objectives and sub-objectives in a hierarchical manner within a dashboard. The number and variety of computer systems and programs that store and/or manipulate hierarchical data sets continues to increase as computer processing applications proliferate.
With the advent and expanded use of graphical user interfaces over the last two decades, it has become possible to display all or part of hierarchical data sets to the user of a computer via a “tree diagram” representation. Tree diagrams are particularly useful in displaying hierarchical data as the levels of the tree diagram visually depict the location of each piece of data in a way that quickly and intuitively conveys to the user both the location of the data within the hierarchy and the relationship of that data to other data in the hierarchy. Additionally, the hierarchical structure of a tree diagram may allow the user to more quickly and efficiently peruse the data, such as by reviewing the entries at the higher levels to locate particular branches which are most likely to contain the information of interest. A user also typically can “expand” or “collapse” the tree diagram at various points (i.e., displaying or hiding information in the higher levels of the tree) to further facilitate viewing the hierarchical data. Both custom programs and tree diagram objects are known in the prior art for providing a tree diagram graphical user interface to a user.
As one example of a tree diagram, FIG. 1 illustrates a prior art “strategy tree” for a BI dashboard. Tree 100 includes an overall “strategy” or top level node 102. Tree 100 further includes first level “objectives” or first level nodes 105-108, and second level objectives or second level nodes 110-112. For a BI tree, each node ultimately ends with one or more key performance indicators (“KPI”s) that are the actual parameters that feed into the objectives. Each of the KPIs and objectives ultimately roll-up to strategy node 102.
One problem with a tree such as tree 100 is that as the number of levels of objectives increase, it is not possible to display all of the objectives on a single screen. Another problem is that the relative weight of each of the objectives is not readily ascertainable. For example, objective 105 may contribute 10% of strategy 102, while objective 107 may contribute 70%. However, the relative percentage is not easily detected when viewing tree 100.